Checkmate # 27
Written by Bruce Jones
Art by Manuel Garcia, Travis Lanham & Santiago Arcas
Published by DC Comics
Considering how much Checkmate resembled a watered-down Queen & Country plot with a steroid injection of super-heroes, and considering that it didn't sell very much, it continues to confuse why the title is being continued now that it's primary writers have bailed out--Bruce Jones doesn't write at all like Greg Rucka, and this is a comic book that's gone from being overly sentimental with a dash of intelligence and innovation to a showcase for a writer who has been given free reign to write a story about a hulking monstrosity with psychic powers who gets treated like Wolverine in those old Weapon X flashback stories. It's still called Checkmate, but it doesn't have much else in common with the first 25 issues. Why DC didn't shut the book down when they were given the opportunity doesn't make any sense at all.
Justice League of America # 22
Written by Dwayne Mcduffie
Art by Ed Benes & Pete Pantazis
Published by DC Comics
Dwayne McDuffie will probably get a fat sack of love from the sort of people who wish the 2008 Justice League was more like the 1978 Justice League, because this is little more than one of those stories, with a dash of the most heavy-handed relationship counseling available, courtesy of Hal Jordan and Superman. If you're the type of reader whose main complaint with super-hero books is that they aren't enough like old super-hero books, you'll probably climb all over this comic and go to bed with a ten foot erection. If you're just looking for an example of why Marvel is making DC out to be a bunch of chumps, then you might enjoy this issue even more--because here it is, with all its bleagh-I'm-tired prowess.
Trinity # 3
Written by Kurt Busiek & Fabian Nicieza
Art by Mark Bagley, Art Thibert, Pete Pantazis, Mike Norton, Jerry Ordway & Allen Passalaqua
Published by DC Comics
How difficult is it to draw an iPod correctly? If it was 2005, maybe then it would be conceivable that an artist couldn't pull it off, but now? You can hate them, never plan to own one and skip the mountaintops, decrying the sound quality of mp3 files all you want, but it's one of the most ubiquitous products of the decade. That's the sort of comic Trinity is, writ large--stuff people recognize presented with a haphazard, "who cares, people will buy it anyway and we can always just say it'll make sense later" attitude. We'll keep up with this piece of shit when it's retitled to reflect what it is: Pointless Fucking Trash.
Dreamwar # 3
Written by Keith Giffen
Art by Lee Garbett, Trevor Scott, Gabe Eltreb & Randy Mayor
Published by DC/Wildstorm Comics
While this is the issue of Dreamwar where Superman wakes up and realizes that he and the rest of the DC universe have been behaving like depraved sociopaths bent on super-hero extermination over in the Wildstorm world, it is also the issue where Batman loses a finger stopping a sword blow only to find himself being gutted and decapitated (on-panel!) for his trouble. In other words, Dreamwar # 3 is the barometer for whether or not you've read enough super-hero comics: if this upsets you, or you think it's wrong to do it, than you clearly need to spend more time catching up on Countdown. For the rest of the world--who doesn't like seeing one of "The World's Greatest Heroes" get his head chopped off by a lesser-known female from a low-selling publisher? (Word of advice on this one--bail out of the mini-series by the next issue at the latest, because it looks like a plot might be coming.)
Kill All Parents
Written by Mark Andrew Smith
Art by Marcelo Di Chiara & Russ Lowery
Published by Image Comics
Once again, here's another comic that would have been a bad one-page gag strip stretched, for full in-your-face horrible value, to an extra long comic book that will be sold at cover price for about one month before it heads directly to its destined home--a remainder box of comic books that cost ten to a dollar, and gets purchased on a regular basis because the title implies incest might occur. These are the kinds of comic books DC should help Image advertise for, because Kill All Parents is the sort of doggerel that makes our office wish there was more issues of Trinity to cringe at.
The Incredible Hercules # 118
Written by Greg Pak & Fred Van Lente
Art by Rafa Sandoval, Roger Bonet & Martegod Gracia
Published by Marvel Comics
This Hercules tie-in with Secret Invasion revolves around hi-jacking that boat of dreams idea from Lucifer, which was probably hijacked from something else and could most likely be traced back to some mythological epic--ask a Greek studies major, they'll probably get red-faced and stutter out an angry explanation. On paper, it sounds pretty entertaining--actual deities teaming up to kill other deities, etc, so on; in practice, it's like every comic built on decent-sounding ideas and little direction: not that fun to read. The end-page reveal, that the little dog/wolf/half-Aibo thing that Amadeus Cho carries around is a Skrull, well, that just seems moronic--the Skrull army has a big plan to take over the world, and part of their sneak attack involves an alien pretending to be a puppy with no legs? Again, sounds fantastic in a sentence. Reading it--well, not so much. Still, this Hercules comic seems to be Marvel's answer to the low-selling Blue Beetle comic--it exists so a small minority of fans can talk about how stupid people are for not buying it in multiple copies. So, here's your "House of Ideas" version of a ticket to the loser party.
Ghost Rider # 24
Written by Jason Aaron
Art by Tan Eng Huat & Jose Villarrubia
Published by Marvel Comics
Tan Eng Huat used to do this really clever, attractive super-hero art that had a real individual style for the John Arcudi attempt to resurrect the Doom Patrol--since then, he's been steadily uglying up his artwork while taking on standard super-hero jobs that probably wanted him to stick to the basics. Here at Ghost Rider, he shows off the latest development in his attempt to not draw like the rest of the spandex army by not seriously inking facial features or limbs--it's unclear as to how exactly he's pulling off what he did here, a sort of fusion of what could be loosely described as Egon Shiele style figures and a fish-eye lensed background, but what is at first pretty ugly and strange actually works really well when separated from the rest of the Marvel line of heroes. Jason Aaron, another writer who is being positioned as the next great hope alongside Matt Fraction, is still finding his legs--but if he's going to follow up a variation on Ennis with a variation on Azzarello, he at least deserves a pat on the back for having great taste. The best thing that could happen to Ghost Rider is for it to remain popular enough to keep in print, but not so popular that Marvel pushes it further into its line. After all, Marvel has wanted their own Hellblazer for a long time, and Morbius is just too Vampire Lestat to be respectable to the absinthe crowd.
Secret Invasion Fantastic Four # 2
Written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
Art by Barry Kitson, Mick Gray, Scott Hanna & Chris Sotomayor
Published by Marvel Comics
Like the first issue, what makes this comic so surprisingly not as bad as most of the Secret Invasion tie ins is how desperate the creators seem to be to make a three-issue miniseries that exists solely to make money behave like a real comic book. Considering that Barry Kitson is killing time while they figure out what his next soon-to-be-canceled book will be while Aguirre-Sacasa is currently reminding about 17 comics buyers why the Man-Thing didn't need to be brought back, it's not hard to figure why both are so hungry to show that they can use what has to be a thankless assignment as a showcase for their comics-as-manufacturing skills. All this comic has to do is sell a few copies for it to have been a good idea to Marvel--being readable would be a feat in itself. This turns out to be not horrible, even though its focused mostly on the absent at roll call personality of the Human Torch and the abysmal, reason-for-birth-control children of Mr. Fantastic.
War Is Hell: The First Flight of the Phantom Eagle # 4
Written by Garth Ennis
Art by Howard Chaykin & Brian Reber
Published by Marvel MAX Comics
War Is Hell hasn't been that far removed from War Stories, the intermittent series of one-shot comics Garth Ennis put out for Vertigo earlier in the decade, nor is the air combat it depicts that different from his Battler Britton series for Wildstorm. What's made Phantom Eagle unusual is the amount of time devoted to the personalities of his characters, most of which comes through in the "downtime" portions of the story, where pilots blow off steam with alcohol and strings of foul banter. In some ways, it makes this series a little more of a story than War Stories, a series that was at times a re-telling of events, but that doesn't necessarily make it better. War Stories was, after all, one-shot comics that had length and an allegiance to facts working against them yet are, for all the handicapping, gems of the war comic genre. And while it's pleasant enough for a week in comics to feature Mr. Ennis doing solid war stories, Phantom Eagle, when cast against the authors own catalog, is a bit light. On the flip-side, it's worth looking into for Howard Chaykin's fighter combat sequences--which is too bad, considering that most of the people who buy comics on a weekly basis only seem to be hungry for stuff they can masturbate to, or on.
-Tucker Stone, 2008
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